Once again, Kim Davis wants the Supreme Court to destroy marriage equality

The disgraced Kentucky clerk hasn't won any of her legal battles, but she and her Christian lawyers are now hoping to undo same-sex marriage nationwide

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I feel like I’ve been saying this for more than a decade now: Christian bigot Kim Davis is back in the news. (Actually, she was back in the news weeks ago, but most major outlets only figured it out now.)

That’s because the former Rowan County, Kentucky clerk who defied the law in 2015 when she refused to sign marriage licenses for same-sex couples, and who already had to pay $100,000 to one of the couples whose civil rights she blocked, and who was forced to pay that couple’s lawyers over $260,000 in legal fees, is now trying to get in front of the Supreme Court with a much bigger target.

She and her lawyers want to overturn marriage equality altogether.

For those of you who are lucky enough to forget she exists, let me remind you of Kim Davis’ inherent hypocrisy: opposing same-sex marriage while engaging in all kinds of straight shenanigans of her own.

This is a woman who, in chronological order, married Husband 1, had twins with Husband 3, divorced Husband 1, married Husband 2, divorced Husband 2, married Husband 3, divorced husband 3, and then remarried Husband 2.

(Just like Jesus wanted.)

How did she justify her personal life with the whole “sanctity of marriage” thing? Simple. “God still wasn’t in the picture” until Husband 2’s mother died, she wrote in her book, and they went back to church in 2011. So she wasn’t a hypocrite, everyone; she just wasn’t a Christian yet.

In fact, in that book, she chalked up the whole hypocrisy charge to “divine irony.” God took a woman married four times and used her to defend marriage against the gays. Isn’t that so mysterious of Him?!

But her legal history is what matters more here. In 2022, a federal judge ruled that Davis broke the law when she refused to sign a legal marriage license for a gay couple on account of her bigoted Christian beliefs. She was a government worker and her personal beliefs, the judge said, couldn’t override the law she had sworn to uphold. When a jury heard the case in 2023 to assess damages, they didn’t buy any of the arguments offered by her attorneys at Liberty Counsel, a Christian hate group. So they eventually ruled that Davis owed David Ermold and David Moore $50,000 each. Liberty Counsel had argued that Davis had qualified immunity and couldn’t be sued. The jury, on the other hand, was persuaded by the principle of fuck around and find out.

At the time, Liberty Counsel said they would appeal the decision… and, of course, that went nowhere because Kim Davis clearly broke the law. When it came to the legal fees she owed, the couple asked for “$246,026.40 in attorneys’ fees and $14,058.30 in expenses.” Davis’ team tried to whittle that down to a little over $100,000, but the judge didn’t buy any of the Davis team’s arguments. (Even if you don’t follow legal cases, his decision was a pleasure to read.) Liberty Counsel predictably said they would appeal this ruling, further dragging out a case they began in 2015.

My initial hunch—one that I still stand by—is that they were only doing this because it was good for fundraising. There was no real legal argument in Davis’ defense, so her side was just for the sake of telling supporters they were fighting, hoping to line their own pockets off of Davis’ faith-based arrogance.

In any case, on July 24, Liberty Counsel filed a petition with the Supreme Court to hear their case. (That’s not unusual. Anyone can ask the Supreme Court to consider their case. Whether SCOTUS takes it up is another question altogether, and they historically say no to most requests. They’ll likely make a decision on this case in a couple of months.)

What is Liberty Counsel asking the justices for?

Specifically, they’re saying Davis has a First Amendment right to free exercise of religion—which, of course, she does—and it’s therefore unfair to sue her an individual for denying those marriage licenses.

That argument has not worked for them up to this point. The Sixth Circuit said her personal beliefs weren’t at issue here; it was her actions as a state representative. They even noted the slippery slope that could occur if they took her argument seriously:

Indeed, it is not difficult to imagine the dire possibilities that might follow if Davis’s argument were accepted. A county clerk who finds interracial marriage sinful could refuse to issue licenses to interracial couples. An election official who believes women should not vote could refuse to count ballots cast by females. A zoning official personally opposed to Christianity could refuse to permit the construction of a church. All these officials would have wielded state power to violate constitutional rights—but they would have followed their conscience, which Davis believes provides a “defense to liability”…

That is not how the Constitution works. In their “private lives”… government officials are of course free to express their views and live according to their faith. But when an official wields state power against private citizens, her conscience must yield to the Constitution.

Then Liberty Counsel gets to what they really care about: They ask the Court to overturn Obergefell altogether “because it was grounded entirely on the legal fiction of substantive due process.” In essence, they’re saying the Constitution never guaranteed marriage equality—not in the 14th Amendment and not historically—and just like this Court overturned Roe v. Wade, they could do the same for Obergefell, a decision they call “egregiously wrong.”

… This flawed opinion has produced disastrous results leaving individuals like Davis “find[ing] it increasingly difficult to participate in society without running afoul of Obergefell and its effect on other antidiscrimination laws.”

For the life of me, I have no clue why Kim Davis, whose entire case rests on the fact that she’s no longer a government employee, can’t “participate in society” because gay people can get married. The Gays are not stopping her from marrying husbands 5 through 8. And I doubt she’s upset that same-sex couples aren’t inviting her to their weddings. So what exactly is she prevented from doing? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Liberty Counsel also says overturning Obergefell wouldn’t affect currently married gay couples; it would just return the definition of marriage “to the States where it belongs” and only stop The Gays who want to get married in certain places moving forward. But of course that would still create new civil rights obstacles for same-sex couples who can’t obtain a marriage license; those who already have one could see other rights eviscerated over time. (The only reason currently existing same-sex marriages wouldn’t be undone is because President Joe Biden signed the “Respect for Marriage Act” in 2022.)

As ABC News points out, this petition “appears to mark the first time since 2015 that the court has been formally asked to overturn the landmark marriage decision.” That’s because Davis is considered one of the only people with legal standing to even make that request—because no one is actually “injured” when gay people get married—but her weak standing is precisely why her arguments have failed up to this point.

Even though the current ultra-conservative Supreme Court may want to overturn marriage equality, it seems unlikely that this is the vehicle they would use to do it. It’s a bad case with an even worse character at its core. The arguments have failed at every junction for years now. But that doesn’t mean the justices will automatically dismiss it like a rational Court would, because this is no longer a rational Court. In 2020, the Court rejected a different attempt by Davis to overturn the rulings against her, but both Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito (who agreed not to hear the case) said “those with sincerely held religious beliefs concerning marriage will find it increasingly difficult to participate in society without running afoul of Obergefell and its effect on other anti-discrimination laws.”

Even if the Supreme Court doesn’t take up this case, many conservative Christians share her end goal of ruining other people’s lives:

… Lambda Legal reports that at least nine states have introduced legislation to block new marriage licenses for LGBTQ people or passed resolutions urging the Supreme Court to reverse Obergefell so far in 2025.

And in June, the Southern Baptist Convention voted to make a top priority of overturning “laws and court rulings, including Obergefell v. Hodges, that defy God’s design for marriage and family.”

These people love pretending to be victims. They wrongly believe their faith grants them automatic permission to break the law and discriminate.

The funny thing is that Davis always had a simple option available to her: If she didn’t want to sign same-sex marriage licenses after Obergefell, she could have resigned. She would have still been a “martyr” for conservative Christians everywhere! Instead, she insisted on staying in her job while breaking the law. She has since become a laughingstock for the nation—a symbol of Christian hubris, selfishness, and hate.

And she continues to be used by lawyers who repeatedly fumbled the ball. But they’re making a hell of a lot of money off of her, based on this recent email to supporters:

If we do not win this case, Kim Davis will face bankruptcy, and Christians will become easy targets for persecution by the intolerant LGBTQ crowd.

Defend Kim Davis with your gift today.

Nothing like raising money by frightening gullible old Christians who think they’re the real victims whenever another group obtains civil rights…

While I don’t believe the Supreme Court will take up this case, if they do, the results could be catastrophic. Not just for LGBTQ rights but for the simple idea that all Americans are equal under the law. Her case isn’t really about “religious freedom” at all. It’s about giving government officials permission to discriminate. The justices have the ability to rip another gaping hole in the Constitution, turning their personal prejudices into federal policy. Davis isn’t asking for the freedom to practice her faith. She already has that. She’s asking for the legal authority to weaponize it against others.

If she wins, conservatives will use that momentum to gut LGBTQ protections everywhere. Even if current marriages remain intact, the message will be clear: Your rights are temporary, revocable, and subject to the whims of those who despise you who happen to be in power.

That this fight is even possible in 2025 is a damning indictment of where we are. The bigots in power are still trying to undo hard-won freedoms and drag us back to a past where same-sex couples lived in fear, hiding from the law, instead of being protected by it.

(Portions of this article were published earlier)

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